The Veggie H: A Family Recipe

If you ask most people what they think of when they hear the name Hires Big H, they'll say burgers. And they should. We've been grinding fresh beef and pressing hand-cut patties in Salt Lake City since 1959. We've been called the best burger in SLC by more people than we can count, and we've spent three generations earning that reputation one burger at a time.

So when we tell you that one of the most beloved items on our entire menu doesn't contain a single gram of beef, you might raise an eyebrow. When we tell you that Don Hale's eight-year-old great-grandson — a kid who can order literally anything he wants from the kitchen — chooses this item every single time, you might lean in a little closer.

We're talking about the Veggie H. And the story behind it is one of our favorites to tell.

A Trip to the Library

Before the internet made every recipe in the world available in three seconds, there was the library. Card catalogs. Microfiche. Actual books with actual pages that you had to actually turn. And that's exactly where Jon Hale — Don's son, second-generation owner of Hires Big H — went when he decided he wanted to create a veggie burger worthy of the family name.

Now, you have to understand something about Jon. This is a man who grew up in the restaurant business. He watched his father build Hires Big H from the ground up, watched him insist on fresh-cut fries when frozen ones were cheaper, watched him hand-dip onion rings when pre-battered bags showed up at the door from food distributors promising an easier life. Jon inherited that same stubborn streak — the one that says if you're going to do something, you do it right, or you don't do it at all.

So when the idea for a veggie burger came along, Jon didn't call up a food service distributor and order a case of factory-produced frozen patties. He didn't look for the easiest path. He went to the Salt Lake City Public Library, pulled books off the shelves, and sat down to learn everything he could about what makes a great veggie burger. He researched ingredients. He studied binding agents. He read about textures and cooking methods and flavor profiles. He did the homework, the real kind, the kind that involves pencils and notepads and the quiet hum of a reading room.

And then he went back to the restaurant and started cooking.

What Goes Into the Veggie H

The recipe Jon built from that library research is nothing like what you'll find at a fast food chain. There are no mystery ingredients, no lab-engineered proteins, no patties that arrived frozen on a truck from a factory three states away. The Veggie H is made from food. Real, recognizable, straight-from-the-produce-aisle food.

Here's what's inside:

The Vegetables

Carrots, broccoli, onions, green peppers, celery, and mushrooms. That's the foundation. Every one of them diced and prepped in our kitchen, not shipped in pre-chopped from a processing facility. Carrots bring a natural sweetness that anchors the whole patty. Broccoli adds structure and that earthy, almost nutty quality that holds up to heat. Onions and green peppers give it bite and brightness. Celery adds a subtle herbal backbone. And mushrooms — mushrooms are the secret weapon. They bring umami, that deep savory richness that makes you think, wait, this is a veggie burger?

The Grains

Brown rice and oats. These aren't filler. They're intentional. The brown rice gives the patty a satisfying, slightly chewy texture that mimics the density of a traditional burger without trying to pretend it's meat. The oats absorb moisture and help everything hold together during baking, creating a patty that's firm enough to put on a bun but tender enough to bite through without a fight.

The Flavor

Garlic and spices. Jon didn't just want a veggie burger that was healthy. He wanted one that tasted good. Good enough that you'd order it not because you had to, but because you wanted to. The garlic and spice blend he developed ties all those vegetables and grains together into something cohesive and craveable — something that smells incredible when it comes out of the oven and tastes even better when it hits your tongue.

The Binder

Flax seed. Instead of relying on eggs or heavy starches to hold the patty together, Jon chose flax seed as the binding agent. When ground flax meets liquid, it creates a natural gel that holds everything in place without adding heaviness or masking the flavors of the vegetables. It's a choice that shows the depth of Jon's research — this isn't something you stumble onto. This is something you learn about in a library, sitting with a book open in front of you, taking notes.

Baked, Not Fried

Here's where the Veggie H really separates itself from every other veggie burger you've ever had.

Most fast food veggie burgers are fried. They hit a flat-top grill slick with oil, or they go into a deep fryer alongside everything else on the menu. And sure, frying things tastes fine — oil and heat make almost anything palatable. But it also masks everything. You can fry a hockey puck and it'll have a decent crunch. The flavor of the actual ingredients gets buried under grease.

Jon didn't want that. He wanted the vegetables and grains to speak for themselves. So the Veggie H gets baked in our pizza ovens. That dry, even heat creates a gentle crust on the outside while keeping the inside tender and full of flavor. You can actually taste the carrots, the broccoli, the mushrooms, the garlic. Every ingredient is present. Nothing hides behind a wall of fryer oil.

It's a small decision that makes an enormous difference. And it's the kind of decision that only happens when someone takes the time to do real research — the kind of research that starts at a library, not with a phone call to a food distributor.

A Family Tradition of Recipe Creation

If the Veggie H sounds like a labor of love, that's because it is. But it's not an isolated one. At Hires Big H, family recipes aren't unusual — they're the backbone of the entire menu.

Jon's sister-in-law is the one who brought us the brownie recipe — those impossibly fudgy, Dutch-processed cocoa brownies that she called "Melvin Wedgies" for reasons the family still can't quite explain. Jon tasted them, recognized something special, and put them on the menu. That same instinct, that same willingness to invest personal time and care into developing a recipe, is what drove him to the library to figure out the veggie burger.

It's a pattern that repeats across generations. Don Hale built the restaurant on the principle that you make things from scratch because the hard way tastes better. Jon carried that forward, not just by maintaining his father's standards but by creating new recipes that met those same standards. The Veggie H isn't a concession to changing times. It's an expression of the same values that have defined Hires Big H since 1959 — real ingredients, honest preparation, and the belief that every single item on the menu deserves your full attention and effort.

That's what makes Hires Big H a classic American diner in Utah unlike any other. We don't just preserve tradition. We build on it.

The Eight-Year-Old Test

We could talk all day about ingredients and cooking methods and library research. But the most compelling endorsement of the Veggie H doesn't come from a food critic or a restaurant reviewer. It comes from an eight-year-old boy.

Don Hale's great-grandson has access to the entire Hires Big H menu. Every burger, every shake, every plate of fresh-cut fries. He could order the Big H, loaded with toppings. He could go for the hand-dipped onion rings. He could get a thick milkshake spun with real ice cream. He has options that most kids would trade a year's allowance for.

And every single time, he orders the Veggie H.

Think about that for a moment. An eight-year-old, with no agenda, no dietary restrictions driving his choice, no parental pressure to eat his vegetables. Just a kid picking the thing he likes best. And the thing he likes best, at a restaurant famous for its beef burgers, is the veggie burger his grandfather made from a recipe he researched at the library.

If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about the Veggie H, nothing will.

Something for Everyone

One of the things that makes Hires Big H the kind of family-friendly restaurant in Utah that people return to again and again is that there's genuinely something for everyone. We've never been the kind of place where one person in the group has to compromise. You don't come to our restaurant and settle. You come and you find exactly what you want.

The burger lovers get their burgers — fresh ground, never frozen, cooked to order. The shake fanatics get their shakes — thick, hand-spun, made with real ice cream. The fry purists get their fries — fresh-cut from whole potatoes every single day. And the people who want a veggie option? They don't get some afterthought. They don't get a frozen disc that sat in a warehouse for six months. They get the Veggie H — house-made, baked in a pizza oven, built from a recipe that a second-generation restaurant owner cared enough to research at the library.

That's what family dining should look like. Not a menu where the veggie option is clearly an obligation, tacked on at the bottom in small print. A menu where every item, from the flagship burger to the veggie patty, gets the same love, the same attention, the same commitment to quality. Across all three of our locations in Utah, the Veggie H is made the same way, every time — because consistency is just another form of respect for the people who walk through our doors.

House-Made vs. Factory-Produced

Let's be direct about something. The veggie burger landscape in fast food is, frankly, depressing. Most chains treat their veggie option like a box to check. They order frozen patties from a manufacturer, patties made in a factory by machines, with ingredient lists that read like a chemistry textbook. Methylcellulose. Soy protein isolate. Cultured dextrose. These are technically food, in the same way that technically, a participation trophy is an award.

The Veggie H has none of that. You could read the ingredient list to a ten-year-old and they'd understand every word. Carrots. Broccoli. Onions. Green peppers. Celery. Mushrooms. Brown rice. Oats. Garlic. Spices. Flax seed. That's it. No lab. No factory. No mystery. Just food, prepared by people, in a real kitchen.

And the taste difference is night and day. Factory veggie burgers have a sameness to them — a processed uniformity that makes them all taste vaguely the same regardless of which chain you're at. The Veggie H tastes like itself. It tastes like the specific combination of vegetables and grains and spices that Jon Hale chose after weeks of research. It tastes like something someone actually made, because someone actually did.

In a world where the best burger in SLC can come from a place that also serves one of the best veggie burgers in the state, we think that says something important about what quality really means. It means caring about everything. Not just the headline items. Everything.

Two Ways to Enjoy It

The Veggie H comes in two versions on our menu:

The Golden Veggie H at $11.82 is the full experience — all the toppings, all the flavor, the complete package. It's what we'd recommend if you're trying the Veggie H for the first time and want to see what this burger can do when it's fully dressed.

The Veggie H at $10.62 is the streamlined version — perfect if you like to keep things a little simpler, or if you want to customize your own topping combination.

Either way, you're getting the same house-made, pizza-oven-baked patty that Jon built from scratch. The same carrots, broccoli, mushrooms, and brown rice. The same recipe that's been winning people over since the day it first hit the menu.

The Drive-In That Does It All

There's a story we love about Hires Big H, and it goes like this: a family walks in. Dad wants a Big H burger. Mom wants the Veggie H. The teenager wants a basket of fresh-cut fries and a shake. The little one wants onion rings. And everyone sits down together and has exactly the meal they wanted, no compromises, no negotiations, no one picking at their plate wishing they'd gone somewhere else.

That's the whole point. That's what Don Hale built, what Jon Hale expanded, and what the family continues to nurture across three locations in Utah. A place where doing it the hard way isn't just a slogan — it's a promise. A promise that whether you're ordering our most famous beef burger or our house-made veggie patty, you're getting something made with real ingredients, honest effort, and genuine care.

The Veggie H exists because Jon Hale believed that everyone who walked through our doors deserved something great. Not something adequate. Not something passable. Something great. And he was willing to go to the library, open a book, and do the work to make that happen.

In a world of shortcuts, that matters. It matters when you taste it. It matters when you see the look on an eight-year-old's face as he bites into his favorite thing on the menu. And it matters to us, every single day, as we prep the vegetables, mix the ingredients, and slide those patties into the pizza oven the same way Jon taught us to.

Come see what we're talking about. Stop by any of our three Utah locations, check out the full menu, and read more about our family and the values that drive everything we make. Or if you're curious about why we do things the hard way across the board, start with our story about why we make it from scratch.

The Veggie H is waiting. And trust us — if it's good enough for Don's great-grandson, it's good enough for you.